$100,000 Poker Cup in Marrakech Set To Attract The World's Best

Posted at 14:04 2010-09-25

The ultimate in high stakes tournament poker will unfold at the Es Saadi Casino in Marrakech, Morocco for one of the most expensive live tournaments in the history of poker. It all goes down on Friday October 8th through Sunday October 10th where ten players will each put up $100,000 in this unique format. The PokerNews Live Reporting team will be on hand to provide full live coverage of all the action which will also be recorded for television by event partner Selbo Productions of Florida who will produce a 5-hour production to be aired in December 2010.

The driving force behind this unique event, French poker pro, Roger ‘terminator’ Hairabedian, established the event with support from the Bauchet family, owners of Es Saadi Resort & Casino. Hairabedian’s ambition is simple - to crush forty players to victory and win a massive four million dollar prize pool! As per his motto, “anything can happen with poker”, and with an interesting mix of wealthy amateurs and world-class professionals, that motto may prove very true in this event.

With a $100,000 buy-in, “The Poker Cup” will aim to bring together forty of the world’s top players, many of them having already confirmed their attendance, including David Benyamine and 2010 November Niner Michael Mizrachi.

The format is a unique one for live poker tournaments, but shares some similarities with the “Cashout” tournaments seen on Full Tilt Poker. The tournament will run as a “Shootout” with five tables of eight players and each player starting with a single $100,000 stack. There will be a random draw for poker pros and another random draw for the rich and famous non-pros, assuring at least two poker pros per table.

The top two players on each shootout table will qualify for the final table, at which point a cashout of up to $100,000 is allowed. This formula, unseen before, dares high rollers to let it ride and allows anyone who made it into the tournament via one of many live satellites, to cash out up to $100,000!

As for who will be the other poker pros enlisted, lips are tightly sealed for the moment. Will we see Ivey, Antonius or Dwan join this exclusive ultra-high roller event? Will they take the short trip to Northern Africa as part as their current European poker tour?

Those in the areas might be interested in taking a shot at one of the live satellites for the chance to join the world’s poker elite in this once-in-a-lifetime event. There are a series of affordably priced live satellites running from September 22nd through until October 7th at Casino Es Saadi. Buy-ins start at only 45 Euros. Several amateurs could make it in for their shot at an estimated prizepool of $4,000,000, or they can make the final and walk away with up to $100,000 in cash!

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